Secrets in the Dark
by Delirium's Child
Summary: In the end, it is always dark... warning: character death and general unhappiness
1. Default Chapter

Challenge #: 51  
**Author: **Afton  
**Title: **Secrets in the Dark  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Spoilers/Warnings: **A Character Death. And well, this is just really... odd. I really did mean to write something more normal, but it ran away with me. So here it is!

The Burg will keep its secrets. It seems so peaceful, so calm; a community of family, faith, forthright in its appearance. If dinner is on the table at six and all the windows washed; if all the floors are polished and the steps are swept, it blinds you, doesn't it, Mother?

So blinded by the gleam of the polished silver, hypnotized by the reflection in the china, you can almost forget the shadows. You can almost forget the darkness lurking just beyond your view. And you've all done it so well, Mother, so very well. You've almost forgot it exists.

But it hasn't forgot about you. The Darkness is looking back now, Mother. And it is creeping closer, swallowing everything in its path, grinding it to nothing. But you don't notice. You don't hear the screams.

Sloane. Stark. Comstock. There are so many, so very many...

But that's nothing new. You never heard mine, why would you hear a stranger's?

It is the not hearing that you cannot forget now. But do not think that it is my doing. The half-heard screams echoing in your ears, the pleas for release, they are your own, Mother. I do not scream now.

I am in the smooth curve of the trigger as the finger wraps around it. The gleam of light reflecting off the silver knife as it escapes its sheath and the man in black draws it across the throat of the other. I am the shadow now. Watching you all gather below dressed in black, the color of shadows, a fitting tribute...

You all stand there begging me, your daughter, your sister, your lover, your friend, your loved one, for release, but I am no creature of flesh and blood and I have no reason left to judge.

For I am the shadow now, the glimpse at the edge of your vision. I am your bad child redeemed for when a child dies they were only good. My victory, your loss, for you see now the might have been, the greatest possibilities. Funny, you never liked them when I was myself, but it matters not. If I had lived I would have been ordinary in the end, you would have made me thus. Maybe the tampon factory, maybe the button factory, would have been my end. So do not weep for me.

I'll never have to suffer those purgatories you yourselves so often cursed, you may never trap me in your little boxes. I live now in a land of somewhere else, where no bullets slay the heroes, no love is turned away and it is all the way it never could have been. You have set me here. My victory, your loss.

Down below the night-clad crowd begins to disperse as the sun descends, save for a few. You were all accomplices in my fall, it's true. A harsh word here, a forgotten memory there. You were all a second too far away, a moment past recall. But I do not hold it against you, it is done and I am gone now. Do no seek to find me, for I'm gone away. Forever away, and yet I am all around. You've already discovered that, I think.

You've seen a girl with my face, my curls. Caught a glimpse of her as she rounded a corner or drove past in a car. You've chased after her, haven't you my lover? And you, my darkest knight?

You have seen her too, Mother. She has walked by the house, passed you in the supermarket. But she isn't me, you know. I am gone forever.

You are not so easily satisfied, my darkest knight. You never were. You never will be. That is your curse, I think, even as it is your gift. The one time you gave up is haunting you now forever. Or rather, you are haunting yourself with it. The guilt gnawing at you is your own. The pain of the might have been is yours, forgiveness is yours. Ask of me where you will, seek me as you will, but on a still and boring night when your phone rings to a familiar tune, let me save you and remind you it will not be my voice.

Mother, do not ask the priest to say a verse for me. There are others who need it more- no heaven shines in the dark. Make the most of that other daughter you have left, the one standing beside you too uncertain to reach out to you. She has tried so hard to be good and she knows she's failed. But she loves you. She is with you. Take her hand, keep her close so that you can hear her when she cries. Learn from this gray day, from the forgiveness you cannot give yourself just yet.

Listen, all of you: being dead is not worse than being alive. But you cannot hear me. Then, even when I was alive you didn't listen. So it is not so very different, only the view has changed. Oh yes, the view has changed. I can see the shadows now.

I can hear the secrets. Some are secrets of love, some of envy. Secret mistakes, secret fears, secret battles, secret tears. So many secrets whispering, it is no wonder you could not hear me.

It all happened as it must, history is like that. Death is like that. Even now as the smallest girl screams and tromps on a spider, it is present. She is reprimanded and will not go to the movies next weekend, so she will not have the idea of trying to fly like the hero, she won't jump off the roof. At least until the movie appears on video. She will not be at the hospital when the bomb goes off that will be planted by the young man, and so she will live to meet the young scientist and inspire him to find the cure. It will save countless lives... But do you not think the spider would have lived if it could?

And while the mourners below whisper their good byes to the piece of stone above the flesh that once was mine, not so far away dark men move in dark places, tracking. tracing, trapping those who spilled my blood. My knight has never been forgiving of such things, nor my lover either.

Now those hands that held me, that silenced my screams, that ushered me on to my new home, now they will join me here. Are even now joining me here. Some of them are little more than children, some little less than human. Their deaths will go unannounced, unmourned. But here in the Dark they change as I have, into what might have been.

And in the light, around us, below us, what could have been is this instead. That is my secret, the Darkness' secret.


	2. Sainted Secrets

**Sainted Secrets**

Disclaimer: Janet Evanovich created the Stephanie Plum series. I'm not making any money off of this stuff.

**00000000000000000000000000000000**

Valerie sat at the table, staring down at her now empty plate. It seemed like only moments ago it had been overflowing with so much food… she reached out and grabbed another roll. She hated looking at the plate, so empty, clinging to the last crumbs and smears of gravy. All that empty white. All that blank space. It made her stomach rumble.

Next to her, Albert was babbling to Grandma Mazur about aliens or something. She tuned him out now, just as she tuned out Mary Alice's whinnies and Angie's barely audible humming.

Her mother was setting down the dessert- a delicious bundt cake. Distantly a part of her wished it was a pineapple upside down cake, but she pushed the thought away. There were no more pineapple upside down cakes. Not since Stephanie… Valerie bit into the roll, although she kept her eyes on the cake. She wouldn't think about Stephanie. Not just now. Maybe later.

Thinking about Stephanie always made her think about so much else. It made her think about the empty look in Dad's eyes. It made her think about the sadness that crept into Grandma Mazur's eyes every time there was the sound of a truck driving by, the knowledge that it wouldn't stop here, would never stop here. The only member of this family who drove a truck was long gone now.

And she took the possibility of pineapple upside down cake with her.

Valerie sighed as she swallowed the last of the roll and helped herself to a slice of cake. Her stomach was full, but she needed this. She needed the sugar, the rush of pleasure that came from that first bite of dessert. She could feel everyone glancing at her as she dug in, could feel what they were thinking. Oh yes, she could feel it, could feel the hidden disdain, and faintly even the disgust that they kept hidden even better than the disdain. She knew what she looked like. She knew all too well. Was reminded of it every time she saw her reflection, saw the sloppy tent-like clothes she had been reduced to wearing, the pudgy cheeks, the double chin.

It disgusted her too, especially when she could remember at time when she was thin, when she was serene and perfect and so _thin_. She could remember when her life was perfect, when she was a tanned, toned California homemaker. She still remembered what it was once like to wear sexy shoes without her foot overflowing it like a loaf of fresh baked bread or what it was like to turn around in front of a dressing room mirror in a new dress and have other people look at you with envy instead of pity.

But it was all right. This wasn't going to last forever, this ugly fat phase. It was going to go away, and she was going to be thin again. She was going to have a life again, because she was going to be serene and perfect again. She would be St. Valerie.

Stephanie would have been so proud.

She looked down at the plate, once more empty and glanced around the table. Mother was trying to shush Lisa. Angie was still eating her own slice of cake and Mary Alice was licking hers clean of icing. Albert had gravy down his shirt, and was bouncing in his seat as he and Grandma talked about a new case. Dad's head was down and he was on what had to be his second slice.

Good, it was a perfect time. She murmured and excuse and placed her napkin over her plate so she wouldn't have to look at the empty void of white again. No one made any remark and she gratefully took the escape and headed upstairs as fast as she could.

She didn't breathe again until the bathroom door locked behind her.

-

"Where's Valerie?" Ellen asked, once Lisa had given up fussing in favor of chewing contendedly on her teething biscuit.

"Oh, probably the bathroom. She's got a thing about brushing her teeth," Albert volunteered. "She can't stand not brushing her teeth after she eats. Flossing too. Says she doesn't like not having fresh breath."

"Good for her, she won't have to have to darned false teeth like I got. Of course, I like having them- means that if I want them cleaned, all I gotta do is send 'em to the dentist, no waiting around in that office."

"I keep meaning to tell her, she looks so much better, now she's dropped all that weight," Ellen said. "I wonder how she's doing it?"

"One of those new diet pills, probably. Have you see that ad on tv? Says if you got any problems losing weight, it'll take off one size a week…"

-

Valerie looked at herself in disgust. The scale had to be off, that was the only explanation. 118 didn't look like this, she looked more like 218. She sighed and measured out another cup of mouth wash.

No more gravy. She could do that. No one would care if she cut out gravy. Maybe bread, too. No more gravy or bread. That wasn't much, perfectly reasonable… She was just going to have to cut back, stop the midnight snack run, even. That wouldn't be so hard. She didn't used to have midnight snacks. St. Valerie never ate after 8 o'clock. She could do this.


End file.
